There’s a sucker born every minute. There’s no other good way to explain the fact that, at least as of a few weeks ago, Victor Marx was the leading fundraiser among Republican candidates for Colorado governor.
The question now is whether members of the Republican Party of Colorado will erect a circus tent or work to build a big tent for a viable future in statewide politics.
Barbara Kirkmeyer knew she was just too, well, normal to pin her political plans on the GOP’s caucus and convention system, which these days increasingly caters to MAGA cultists and fringe religious zealots, neither of which are remotely in touch with mainstream Colorado voters. So she did what any sane Republican would do and petitioned her way onto the primary ballot for governor.
The “roughly 2,200 delegates” at the convention (per the Sun) mostly split their votes between Rep. Scott Bottoms and political neophyte Victor Marx, both of whom will join Kirkmeyer on the primary ballot. And, thanks to judicial rulings, unaffiliated voters will be able to cast votes in the Republican race unless they opt to fill the Democratic ballot instead.
As election conspiracy monger and felon Tina Peters enjoys her newfound relative freedom, thanks to the mercy of Democratic Governor Jared Polis, we should reflect on the April 11 CPR report on the GOP convention: “When all the votes were counted, organizers discovered they had more votes than credentialed delegates, due to an error in the credentialing system.” Oopsie. What’s a little voter error among friends?
We are thus reminded that the tax-funded party primary system is a travesty of a mockery of a sham (to quote a Woody Allen line) in which a tiny group of partisan party insiders selects candidates for the entire state in which most voters are unaffiliated.
What we need instead are party-free primaries in which government sets the same ballot-access rules for all comers and sets sensible voting rules to winnow the field from multiple candidates to two. I prefer approval voting for this process, by which voters vote for (approve of) as many of the candidates as they want, and the top two move on to the general.
Journalists have not yet fully investigated Marx
Lots of people now have watched Kyle Clark’s devastating interview with Victor Marx for 9News. You can watch the short version or the long version or read the accounts of Ross Kaminsky, Mandy Connell, or Hemant Mehta.
Here’s the thing that some people seem not to have realized: Journalists have yet to do an in-depth investigation into Marx’s past and his many, let’s just say, questionable claims.
To a large degree Clark asked questions along these lines: “Your critics say you’re totally full of shit. Are you?” And then Marx would say no. It’s a masterful interview, but it only scratches the surface of what a full-scale investigation will reveal if Republicans are suicidal enough to advance Marx to the general election.
To be sure, Clark did his homework. For example, in response to Marx’s claim that “our team rescued 43 children from the grips of evil predators,” Clark followed up about this “Operation Northern Lights in Florida.” Clark said, “So the U.S. Marshals named 25 partner agencies, including two rescue ministries, that were involved in that operation. They said nothing about you and your ministry.” This is just a taste of what’s to come.
I’ll add a minor example. I was immediately skeptical of Marx just based on his claim to hold the world record in disarming someone. As anyone with any firearms training knows, only an idiot would hold a pistol on someone within arm’s reach. So, yes, Marx appears to be well-practiced at disarming untrained idiots. I’ll give him that one!
Rebuilding the house
You can’t burn the house to the ground and rebuild it in a day. Barbara Kirkmeyer is a very respectable candidate to lead Republicans into the midterm elections (although I’m still mad that she did not stand up for homeschoolers toward the end of session). But she would have struggled mightily in a good year, and this is anything but a good year for Republicans. But she can help Republicans rebuild for future success.
Republicans already took an important step in the right direction by electing software engineer Craig Steiner over Joe Oltmann as party chair. To review, Oltmann referred to Colorado’s Jewish political leaders as a “Synagogue of Satan Jews,” spoke “jokingly” of hanging his political opponents, and called for a mass “hanging party” in the context of the Tina Peters case. I don’t know anything about Steiner, but he could not possibly be less sane than Oltmann.
In summarizing a column by Krista Kafer, the Denver Post says, “Victor Marx and Scott Bottoms bring the dumpster fire to the Republican primary.” I’m not sure that’s fair to dumpster fires. Anyway, sure, Bottoms has made unsubstantiated allegations about a pedophile ring operating out of the Capitol, but at least as a legislator he has some idea of how government works. Marx “the Exorcist” is both crazy and clueless.
Polis, whatever you think of him (I’m a fan overall), slowed the expansion of the Democrats’ tax-and-regulate schemes. The next Democratic governor will play cheerleader instead.
Colorado desperately needs a real opposition party to stand up for the taxpayer, the business owner, and the person basically looking to be left the hell alone.
Will Republican Party members continue to run their circus of the macabre, or will they step up and build a viable big-tent political party?
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
